It’s never too late to learn something new about gardening, and that’s been the case this summer. My husband saw a demonstration about raising monarch butterflies during the Port Garden Club’s July garden tour, and now he’s hooked.

For thousands of years, rapeseed oil has been a popular cooking fat in many parts of the world. It’s been used in Japan and China for 2,000 years and in India for almost twice as long. It was unknown in most European and American kitchens until after World War II, although you can find it on grocery shelves everywhere today.

Despite weeds sprouting up everywhere, this is our favorite time of year to just sit in our garden and watch the wildlife on display. My favorite sight is a bumble bee traveling from flower to flower, collecting pollen in the baskets on her back legs, ignoring all the bustle, even when the hummingbirds try to hog the flowers.

I don’t think I ever saw a slug in my mother’s garden, so spotting Missouri slugs, which are frequently 6 inches long and everywhere by mid-summer, was a revelation to me. They didn’t just haunt our garden but could be spotted sliming their way up window panes on soggy Missouri nights.

If we let them, grackles take over our bird feeders in summer. So when the weather warms up, the regular feeders come down and are replaced with several that have cages built around them. Larger birds like grackles and hairy woodpeckers have to dine elsewhere, but smaller birds have no problem hopping between the bars.

The cherries we picked may be pitted, but our fruit harvest is still underway — the berries are ripening. We don’t have the usual suspects, but a bunch of northern fruits I learned to love at my mother’s home in Canada.

There are more kinds of beetles on earth than any other kind of critter, and lately it seems all of the bad ones are in the news. We’re protecting our ash tree from the emerald ash borers, so that’s a win. We aren’t sure if the viburnum damage I’ve noticed is the beginning of an invasion by viburnum leaf beetles, but we’re watching it, so I consider that a draw. But the Japanese beetles are not only munching the roses this year but eating up everything else in sight. We have lost that battle, at least for this year.

Every year we try something new in our garden. Some years it’s a new flower; others a new vegetable. This year we’re tasting edibles — sesame and English cucumbers.

Sesame is one of the oldest cultivated crops. Wild plants are native to sub-Saharan Africa east through India. Sesame remains in both India and the Middle East have been dated to 3,000 B.C. The plant’s tiny seeds are richer in oil than any other seed or nut — the name sesame is actually derived from a word for oil.

Right now our ornamental ponds are the busiest places in our garden. That’s quite a surprise considering the disastrous winter damage that left two of them frozen, damaged and, we thought, lifeless. It has been a real revelation and confirmation that life usually finds a way to survive.